Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Bellamy Excerpts

Friday 19th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Carey of Clifton. In declaring my membership of the Constitution Committee, I say first that the delegated powers in the Bill are excessive. Clause 41(4) permits the Secretary of State to amend the National Health Service Act by delegated legislation. Allowing that fundamental legislation, dedicated to prolonging life, to enable the Minister to do the exact opposite—namely, to assist death—with no detail as to how that new function should be discharged, is not a proper exercise of delegated powers.

I turn now to the fundamentals. The Bill is not, in fact, based on suffering, as others have pointed out. According to the impact statement, other regimes are based either on intolerable suffering, such as in Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands et cetera, or on terminal illness, such as in some US states, Australia and New Zealand. Under this Bill, those with terminal illness but who are not suffering may request assisted death, but those who are suffering intolerably but are not terminally ill may not do so. Given that so much support for the Bill depends on the avoidance of suffering, and so that we are all clear, I respectfully ask the noble and learned Lord the sponsor to put fully on the record why the Bill is not based on suffering.

We are told in the impact statement that, by year 10—14 years’ time, given the four years of preparation—the Bill will give rise to around 7,000 assisted deaths a year in England and Wales. Given that roughly 570,000 people die every year in England and Wales, that is around only 1% of deaths. That raises two opposite questions. First, if so few people are to benefit from assisted dying, is that sufficient to justify the profound change to society and the role of the state that the Bill aims to bring about? Secondly, can we credibly trust that 1%, which is, apparently and somewhat bizarrely, based exclusively on the experience of the largely rural state of Oregon in the western USA? If we cannot trust that estimate, is the Bill the thin end of the wedge? Once the principle is conceded, will pressure to go further inevitably increase? I ask the supporters of the Bill to give the House reassurance on that important point.

Finally, as many have already said, individual autonomy, which is the other main argument in this debate, cannot be exercised in isolation from the rest of society. Once the principle is conceded, everyone’s doctor-patient relationship is affected. It affects all our relationships with our doctors. Similarly, the vulnerable, the inarticulate and those for whom “autonomy” is largely illusory are all affected.

Given these very difficult questions, including those of mental capacity, the Bill’s complex bureaucracy and the role of the coroner, to give only a few examples, we need much more substance in the Bill before we can proceed any further.